DMCA Notice : Do I Need To Worry?

TheBigK

Well-known member
Google's just sent me a DMCA notice saying one of the threads on our boards had copy-pasted (copyrighted) material. Despite having strict rules and mods; we do get copy-pasted content once in a while.

I've deleted the thread and notified Google. Is there anything I need to pay attention to or worry about?
 
If you have taken the required action, I would assume you need not worry. I would ask the sender to confirm compliance though.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I would probably ensure your users are reminded of the rules, maybe even give the person responsible a warning just to sort of make an example of what might happen in the future if the rules are violated again. If it were to happen again, as long as Google or whoever could see that you've got measures in place to prevent it, it will be fine. You can only do so much.
 
The copied content was 3 paragraphs (150-200) words of content. What's the worst that can happen (it looks like Google's removed that URL from searches)? Does it affect overall site ranking?
 
I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I would probably ensure your users are reminded of the rules, maybe even give the person responsible a warning just to sort of make an example of what might happen in the future if the rules are violated again. If it were to happen again, as long as Google or whoever could see that you've got measures in place to prevent it, it will be fine. You can only do so much.
Thanks!

I wonder what happens to Facebook - people can copy-paste whole thing and FB would face like 1000000 such complaints every day. Does DMCA notice apply to FB?
 
The copied content was 3 paragraphs (150-200) words of content. What's the worst that can happen (it looks like Google's removed that URL from searches)? Does it affect overall site ranking?
It could do, but I doubt it would in an isolated incident such as this.

Unfortunately you have to take the view that copyrighted content is copyrighted content. Whether it be 10 words 0r 1000, you have to at least be seen to take a serious stand point on it.

We used to have big problems years ago with people posting magazine scans. You just have to close and delete on sight and warn/ban the members that do it - despite your personal feelings on the matter and despite the "severity" of it.
 
I bet it does. I would imagine there's some sort of special department at places like Facebook that deal with such things and if a complaint is made they deal with it appropriately.
 
I don't think they penalize your ratings, the worst that can happen is that your site is banned.
Bah! But that'd happen only when we get repeated DMCA notices; right? This was our first in the last 6 years. We're very strict; sometimes to the point that annoys people o_O.
 
I doubt they take action against single offenses. I would still demand a confirmation of compliance though, so keep nagging them until they do (with respectable intervals, of course).
 
I had content blocked in google a while ago, someone cut pasted about 20 threads worth of topic material... you end up on a site called chillingeffects you can read your notice on... I just changed the wording around and filed a counter notice with google, three weeks later my search results for these topics are okay again, and I am ranked higher then the site it comes from. Everything can be fixed lol.
 
So the content that was copy-pasted was copyrighted by Google?
Nope. One of the members just copied the content from one of the blogs and pasted it on our boards. The original author filed the complaint against us and 4 other websites.
 
It's understandable that they act as intermediaries. Technically they can be implicated in the copyright breach as they take a copy of your content for indexing.
 
As long as the copy and paste falls to around 10-15% of the actual content, fair use normally applies. If they copied the entire thing, huge no-no. If the individual quotes it and does not give credit to the source, another huge no-no.

We had a member a few years ago who was lifting entire articles and passing them off as his own. When the real author contacted us, we terminated (banned) the offender, deleted every single post he had ever made, and provided the author with the email information for the offender as well. She was extremely satisfied with the results.
 
... we terminated (banned) the offender, deleted every single post he had ever made, and provided the author with the email information for the offender as well. She was extremely satisfied with the results.
Believe it or not, but without a court demand, that would be illegal in the UK as it would fall foul of data protection laws.
 
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